The end of the season is a busy time as I scramble to collect and assemble data I use to create my season evaluations, and this year went according to form, full of miss-steps and frustrations, but with the help of a short cut – using Delta Graphs’ franchise run and home run adjustments when I couldn’t get mine to work properly – allowed me to complete the process last week.
I normally only glance at Delta Graphs’ WAR ratings, and never use them to compare pitchers and position players, because WAR credits pitchers with far too much value. But I had to lean on them a bit in the PL this year because Win Shares, although sound in many ways, does not handle players from extremely unbalanced teams.
This year’s problem was the Rakuten Eagles. Their balance between offense on one side, and pitching and defense on the other, was Japan’s worst since the 1976 Lions, who unlike the Eagles were not run by one of the richest men in Japan, but operated on a shoestring from the sale of the team’s naming rights to the Crown Lighter cigarette lighter company.
Despite being a mediocre team, the Eagles’ pitiful team pitching and defense means their best offensive performers shared a huge amount of credit for Rakuten’s 67 wins, with the resulting evaluations for Ryosuke Tatsumi and Yuya Ogo making these good players look like solid MVP candidates.
The best thing about Win Shares is that it works top down, from the team to the position to the individual with players compared with each other in terms of their performances within those contexts. As long as teams are not absurdly unbalanced, it works wonderfully. WAR works better for the Eagles this year because it compares individual’s contributions in a league context rather than a team context.
For that reason, I referred to WAR when considering my PL votes, which are below.
Tatsumi still earned a vote from me, and I filed my ballot before my second thoughts could snap me out of my funk — although I didn’t rank him among the PL’s three best outfielders, so definitely a flub there.
People scream and shout about horrendous award votes, but people make mistakes.
I don’t think there will be much of an uproar as there was last year when 267 voters cast PL award ballots, and I was one of the eight who didn’t give Yoshinobu Yamamoto a first-place vote, and one of the two who didn’t vote for him at all, although that was well thought out.
My PL award ballot
MVP
- Kensuke Kondo, SoftBank Hawks
- Ryosuke Tatsumi, Rakuten Eagles
- Ryoya Kurihara, SoftBank Hawks
Rookie of the year
Natsuki Takeuchi, Seibu Lions
Best Nine
- P: Livan Moinelo, SoftBank Hawks
- C: Tomoya Mori, Orix Buffaloes
- 1B: Hotaka Yamakawa, SoftBank Hawks
- 2B: Hiroto Kobukata, Rakuten Eagles
- 3B: Ryoya Kurihara, SoftBank Hawks
- SS: Kenta Imamiya, SoftBank Hawks
- OF: Kensuke Kondo, SoftBank Hawks
- OF: Chusei Mannami, Nippon Ham Fighters
- OF: Ukyo Shuto, SoftBank Hawks
- DH: Franmil Reyes, Nippon Ham Fighters
My CL award ballot
MVP
- Koji Chikamoto, Hanshin Tigers
- Seiya Hosokawa, Chunichi Dragons
- Kazuma Okamoto, Yomiuri Giants
Rookie of the year
Mikiya Tanaka, Chunichi Dragons
Best Nine
- P: Tomoyuki Sugano, Yomiuri Giants
- C: Shogo Sakakura, Hiroshima Carp
- 1B: Kazuma Okamoto, Yomiuri Giants by a whisker over Tyler Austin
- 2B: Naoki Yoshikawa, Yomiuri Giants
- 3B: Munetaka Murakami, Yakult Swallows
- SS: Hideki Nagaoka, Yakult Swallows
- OF: Koji Chikamoto, Hanshin Tigers
- OF: Seiya Hosokawa, Chunichi Dragons
- OF: Shota Morishita, Hanshin Tigers
